A Scan-to-BIM Approach for the Management of Two Arab-Norman Churches in Palermo (Italy)

Abstract

The paper shows the results of the research activities carried out by the Department of Engineering at the University of Palermo (Italy), which assessed the application of the Heritage Building Information Modelling (HBIM) methodology through a Scan-to-BIM approach to two local churches belonging to the medieval period. This project was motivated by a renewed interest from the city administrators towards the conservation of cultural heritage dating back to the Arab-Norman domination in Sicily since one of the two buildings was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list in 2015. The morpho-typological style of the churches has been acquired by high-detailed 3D surveys, which provided the base for two HBIM models suited to render the peculiarity of these buildings at their best. The BIM environment allowed both the geometrical representation of all the architectural elements and their further enrichment with the integration of non-geometric data and semantic signification through a knowledge-based workflow. This process led to a hierarchical organization of two high-accuracy digital replicas and to the creation of a database containing all of the architectural items typical of the Arab-Norman style, aimed to share the awareness of its conservation and to match all of the Cultural Heritage requirements. In the future, the features in this database can be shared with other specialists as reference objects for further studies on cultural heritage sites in the UNESCO list.